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And pain. There was plenty of that.
Giving himself a stern cursing, he remembered that the man had been hit over the head not an hour ago.
“I want you lie down,” he ordered gently.
The lad looked at him as if he’d grown horns. “You want me to—lie…with you?”
“Nay,” Malcolm said vehemently, and at the sight of a puckered frown he amended. “Not, nay, just not… now. I mean, perhaps not at all. That is… I doona expect anything…but…” Christ, what was he, a pubescent youth? He clenched his teeth and tried again. “I want to examine yer head again, to make certain ye’re not concussed.”
The lad blinked a couple more times before replying. “I see.”
Lowering to the fur, he cast his cloak to the side and stretched out on his back.
Malcolm watched peach nipples pucker against a smooth chest and give way to the shelves of his ribs, the length of a lean torso and the prominent bones of hips before legs that went on forever stretched beneath trews that didn’t deserve the designation. To say his shape was fine would be like saying the night was dark or the December wind was bitter.
“You’re staring.”
Malcolm shook himself. “Apologies.” Kneeling beside him, he reached for his scalp again. “May I examine ye?”
“I’m at your mercy.”
Heat flared beneath the chill of the evening at the words, and Malcolm again reached into his soft tresses in search of a bump. Still finding none, he gently put his finger beneath each of the remarkable eyes and leaned in to check pupils for signs of inconsistency. “Is yer vision blurry at all?” he queried.
“Nay.”
“Are ye nauseated or faint?”
“Nay.”
Breaths mingled, and a strange kinetic kind of energy seemed to leap between their skin. “Ye should stay warm,” he said, lamenting the husky note in his voice as he reached for his cloak to warm the lad again.
Malcolm found it strange that the man seemed perplexed as he tucked his cloak around his shoulder. He had to be chilly; it was colder than a sow’s teat in autumn.
“What about yer headache?”
“It’s better now.” He shook his head back and forth as though to prove it.
Malcolm paused, his hand resting on a concerningly bony shoulder. There was naught left to do, and yet he didn’t want to leave him here.
A soft hand snaked from beneath the cloak and covered his. “Is there… aught I can do to repay you for your kindness?” The lad reached out and ran a finger down the length of his stubbled jaw.
Malcolm had to force his next words around a throat gone dry. “Nay,” he said. “I’d never take an offer like that as payment.”
Lavender eyes flared. “Then what would it take, to get you to share my bed?”
Chapter Three
Sean thought Malcolm would hastily accept his invitation.
Instead, the king backed away and gained his feet, knocking his head on the ceiling in haste. “I should… go.” Moving the door, he ducked out and replaced it with a final-sounding thunk.
No person he’d been forced to seduce for the Wyrd Sisters in a century or more of confinement had ever turned him down. Not man. Not woman. Not God nor demon. It seemed that the more odious his charge, the more willing they were to take his body. His beauty. There was not one thing odious about Malcolm de Moray. The man was built as strong as the castle he lorded over, and had features just as finely crafted.
Sitting up, Sean brought his knees to his chest and hugged them, staring at the hovel’s entry. Maybe the king could see past his beauty, to the demonic creature he’d become after all these years. Perhaps it drove him away.
Maybe his intuition was stronger than initially thought, or perhaps the Wyrd sisters got it wrong he would rather lie with a woman. And yet, a king his age and not married?
A rare thing, indeed.
